Forever and Never
by depressivedoe
Summary: After centuries jumping between timelines to try and make a life with Chloe, Max Caulfield resigns herself to making Arcadia Bay a better place in her memory. A decade later, Sean Prescott returns to deliver a warning, and Max is swept back into a world of supernatural horror. Is this the second chance she always wanted or just another of the universe's cruel jokes?
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One: Never**

Flashes of orange and pink illuminate the darkness behind my eyelids. The smell of chlorine almost overpowers stale cigarette smoke. She's there. The bed sinks lower with each breath and raises as she exhales. As usual—a usual that this Chloe doesn't and will never know—she is sprawled out across three-quarters of the bed, leaving me a tiny sliver at the edge. I don't open my eyes. I can't. One of her hands is less than an inch away from my thigh, radiating a warmth that makes me shiver.

No, I won't look at her, but I will take her hand in mine and roll over to hold it against her stomach, creating a timeline where I wasn't afraid to nuzzle into her hair until my nose draws small circles on her neck. In every one of the million timelines I've walked, I always try to get her to quit smoking. It's disgusting—everything about it—how it smells, how it tastes on someone's tongue, how it rots your lungs, but none of those stop me from hyperventilating against her neck, trying to get a second-hand high.

"Max?" Chloe jumps as she wakes up, trying to pull away, but I hug her tight, "Max, dude, wake up."

She twists in my arms to face me, and I bury my face in her chest. I can't. I can't. But my shaking gives me away. Warm tears soak through Chloe's shirt.

"Oh my God. Max, what's wrong?"

"I-I muh-miss you _so_ m-m-much."

"Wow, Max. I'm right here. What's going on? Talk to me."

She puts a hand on my shoulder, but I shove her away.

"Hey. Come on. You're kinda stealing my thunder. Angry crying and pushing people away is supposed to be my thing."

"Y-you don't understand."

"Yeah. You're right. I've got no fucking idea what's going on. Hang on. Is this about breaking into the pool? God, this is the first time you've ever broken a rule, isn't it?" Chloe laughs, "You're too damn cute."

"N-nuh-no," I sob, "I-I-"

"Hey," one hand gently tips my chin up until I'm looking into her eyes, "Talk to me."

All the shit I've seen melts away like new-fallen snow. All the pain it's—well it's not gone—but it's bearable. I could take anything if I got to come home each night and feel her arms wrap around me.

"I love you, Chloe Price."

Time freezes. Take it all back. The moment flows backward and out of existence. Another timeline vanished, forgotten to everyone except me.

 _And Max Caulfield. Don't you forget about me._

"Never," I whisper as the world flashes white and I jump back to my empty bed, "Never."

Sometimes I wish I could. Three centuries of jumping between timelines just to find one with her left me colder. Cruel, old me might say. All along, Chloe thought I the better one, but I would throw a match on this world and watch it burn without a second thought if it meant a lifetime with her. She's the one who couldn't take it. No one knows what they're capable of until they're pushed to the edge. I ease out of bed, pausing to push the memories out of my head. No matter how long I live, there's always a little piece of me in that bed on the morning my life changed forever.

My house is the same one I've dreamed of since I was a kid, old school warm and cozy. When I realized I had to settle in this timeline, I tried, I really did. I bought my dream house, forced myself to take pictures again, even went on a few dates. She would have wanted me to. I know that. She would have wanted me to be happy, but I can't be. Not without Chloe. At some point in every timeline, people start telling me how "time heals all wounds," but it's bullshit. I'm the second oldest person alive when you count all my time manipulation, and time has killed a lot of who I used to be, but it's never been able to touch Chloe.

The old map from the lighthouse, the one Chloe marked our super-secret pirate base on, hangs on the wall beside a window. I bought it from Arcadia Bay for sixty thousand dollars. Chloe would have laughed at that. Like anyone would care if I stole the graffitied sign at the abandoned lighthouse, but some things never change. Outside, raindrops hang suspended in the air, catching the last rays of sunlight and transmuting them into a thousand drops of pure gold. A raven is frozen mid-flight above the trees. It's been seven o'clock for hours. I had to freeze it to get some sleep before the tenth annual Price Photo Exhibition.

Ten years for the rest of the world. Ten years and they've already started to forget, but three hundred years has changed nothing for me, and these ten years might have been another hundred with everything I've done. The sharp sting might be gone, but it's been replaced by this horrible void, like my bones are rotting and collapsing inside me. Ten years spent trying to build a better Arcadia Bay. Because it's hers. She died for it.

She died for the world too, but I found out not everything can be changed. I won Arcadia Bay after two decades of war with Sean Prescott, and in exchange, he and Mark Jefferson fled into the night with the FBI on their heels. I won the town's freedom, but I surrendered the world to its fate. Chloe would have hated that. Who knew Chloe Price would be _my_ conscious one day? Scary.

I keep time in a standstill as I change into a plain black dress like the one I wore to the funeral. The black-tie dress code has special significance to Joyce, David, and me. Even though they don't know the full story, they are the only others who know the price of this world, no pun intended. Ok, maybe a little intended. After all, I've got to keep Chloe's memory alive somehow.

I smooth out the dress and slip on a pair of flats. Our—Chloe's and mine—exhibition is being held outside this year after the first five hundred tickets sold out within an hour of going on sale. I doubled the tickets, all profits going to a gun violence prevention super PAC that Joyce runs and I fund, and they were gone fifteen minutes after I tweeted about the addition.

Young me, this would be everything she ever wanted. Critics from all over the world know my name and will spend thousands of dollars to come out to Arcadia Bay for one night. Old idols ask for tickets to be reserved for them in advance. This will be Chema Madoz's third year coming, and Hiroshi Sugimoto has been to every exhibition except the first one. Bloggers and reporters will camp outside, waiting and hoping for a three-second interview to pin to the top of their site or put in their arts and culture section. None of it means fucking anything anymore. No artwork or "better" world will ever be worth Chloe's life.

I keep the standstill going while I walk to the show. The power that used to be a shallow dish, just enough for a few sips, is now deeper than the ocean. I have jumped through photos I didn't take—once back to the first photo ever taken in 1826—built and dismantled entire timelines, and manipulated time in small pockets of space. That was a fun one to figure out. I aged a couple of wine casks three hundred years last year on our anniversary—an anniversary that will never happen now—and drank until I died, or as close to it as I can get anyways.

Whoever or whatever decided taking Chloe wasn't enough. God, I have tried so many times, but I can never be reunited with her, not even in death. Not many people can say they've tasted a shotgun blast and lived, but I can. Three times in our backyard with Chloe's broken body in my arms, I put the gun against my forehead and pulled the trigger. My body betrays me every time. No matter what I do, it always rewinds me back to life at the last moment. Just like it will never let me forget what it felt like to hold Chloe in my arms or feel her lips on mine, rewinding in my sleep, so I have to wake up and let her go again and again and again.

I still have our rings on the chain I wear under my clothes. After everything, Chloe didn't want her mom's ring, not that I blame her. We settled for matching meteorite banded in silver, hers with a sapphire and mine with a ruby—because fuck diamonds. There's an inscription on the inside of each ring. We didn't even plan it. _My partner in crime_ for her and _my partner in time_ for me. I touch them through the dress, pushing the cool circles against my skin like two dead kisses. Luckily no one can see me crying in a standstill.

 _Don't you forget about me._

"Never."

* * *

I weave through the crowd gathered outside the white fence that blocks the lighthouse and my exhibit from their view. Three guards from David's security company stand at the gate as if anyone could steal from me, but he insists. The inside contains a series of black pavilions protecting photos on whitewashed backboards. I put it all up myself. After all, I've got _nothing_ but time since Chloe died.

As I walk through the displays trying to find a place out of sight to release my hold on time, my eyes slip over each photo without sticking to any of them. The most recent series I've created are "faux" historical photos, typically the same moment captured in famous photos but taken from different angles. I've got a picture of every president from John Quincy Adams on while they're sitting at their desk. I've got pictures of Tesla and Einstein in the middle of never before seen work. I've captured the atrocities of every war since 1826. And I don't remember taking any of them. When there is so much to remember, all but the most important pieces slip away, and none of this is important.

The central exhibit, the only one that never changes, stands where the map used to overlook the bay, a wall of photos like the one I made in my dorm at Blackwell so long ago. Chloe and I as kids, fingers and faces sticky with melted popsicles. The last photo of us before William died. Chloe dancing on her bed, wreathed in smoke. Chloe sitting on the same bench on the other side of the exhibit, her electric blue hair glowing in the setting sun. A silver plaque at the center dedicates the show to her. If a reporter asked me to name one of the pieces around me, I doubt I could. They are so trivial, so worthless next to Chloe's life. I double check that no one's looking before letting time go.

My eyes devour each picture again and again, but no matter how hard I try, all I see is a collage of death. Chloe bleeding out on the bathroom floor. Chloe doubled over from a random ricochet. Chloe splattered against the front of a train. Chloe laying over Rachel's grave with a hole in her forehead and Mark Jefferson standing over her.

"Ms. Caulfield?" one of David's security guards interrupts my thoughts, "We're ready to rock and roll whenever you are."

"Let them in," I say without taking my eyes off the wall, waiting for him to walk away before smiling, "I'm ready for the mosh pit, shaka brah."

 _Oh, Chloe. I miss you so much._

Once I tried to drive my car into a concrete barrier, and at the moment before my body betrayed me, the impact of going from one hundred and twenty miles an hour to zero in less than a second crumbled the car like it was tinfoil. Deep shockwaves coursed through every bone, every muscle, and more than pain, there was the fundamental sense that something was wrong. Two-ton cars don't collapse like aluminum cans. They don't soar through the air like they weigh nothing. I was never made to go at a speed where one mishap liquifies my bones. And I was never made to live without Chloe.

I walk to the edge of the cliff overlooking Arcadia Bay as the guests wander in, some sprinting to be the first to see an exhibit. They all care so much. How do they lie to themselves every morning, convince themselves that any of this matters?

"Uh, excuse me? Ms. Caulfield? I was just wondering if you had a second."

"I've got more seconds than I know what to do with," I don't have to look at him to know it's Jordan Hamilton, a young up and coming intern from _The New York Times_ Edith sent as a favor since she had the flu. She warned me in an email yesterday, "Just don't ask me which piece is my favorite. It's the same every year."

"Don't you think," the smug voice I'd recognize in any timeline cuts in, "It would be a good idea to look at the photos before you start asking Ms. Caulfield questions? Or did you jump the fence to sneak a peek while the rest of us had to wait outside?"

"Oh. Right. Yeah, I'll do that."

Once, I never would have taken my eyes off the man behind me. Once, the memories of his darkroom gave me nightmares. Now. Now he is nothing but a cockroach. In every timeline, the self-assured grin and douchebag hipster glasses and suit combo is the same, so what's the point in looking? If only he could see the things I've seen. If only he knew how many times I've framed him in a dark corner and captured him in a moment of desperation. For Rachel. For me. And a thousand times over for Chloe.

"You know, Max," Mark Jefferson says, "I always believed in your vision. I wish I could have been your teacher for longer. We could have learned a thing or two from each other. This latest experiment, the faux historical pieces, is so genuine it's almost magical. Almost as if you'd gone back in time to take the shot. Brilliant work."

"You better have a good reason for being in Arcadia Bay."

"Sean sent me."

"Are you going to tell me why?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter. Does it?"

"No," I turn and smile, "It doesn't."

He has just enough time to smirk before I raise my hand and time stands still. It would be so easy to kill him. Just one push and I could say he slipped off the edge. How many times would his body bounce off the steep slope of the cliff before breaking against the rocky shoreline?

I push my hand forward. Time bends backward at my command. Mark Jefferson moonwalks back to his car, and I follow, the two of us sliding into our seats for his last car ride. It feels good. There, I admitted it. There's still some part of me who hates what I've become, but I can't deny how good it feels to have this fucker at my mercy. I can't deny how good it's felt to kill him so many times. Power hums within me, slams against my core, and I take hold of it, pushing my hand into the river and pulling the water by until the four-hour drive to Seattle is over in four seconds. The trip is nothing but a cacophony of light and color, all consumed by orange and pink light like a burning polaroid.

His hotel is made of white blocks of stone stacked together on the Seattle waterfront in a modernist's sandcastle. Huge one-way windows warp the reflection of the surrounding city, and Mark Jefferson walks backward through the crowd outside with glazed eyes, never looking anywhere but straight ahead. He is so above it all. After all, what point is there paying attention when you can see the future? This Mark hasn't felt the futility of his power against someone who can rewrite the future at her every whim. But he will.

The lobby of the hotel is sleeker than the outside. The tile floors are polished until they house a perfect reflection of us. Teak accents are soft and smooth to touch, and even in the rewind, I can smell the hotel freshness that only comes with multiple treatments of bleach. Mark takes the stairs to the top level, where two black doors show his suite takes up the entire floor, but when we slip inside, the same old do not disturb tag hangs on the interior door handle. I snort. All the dramatic tension, ruined by the stupid little card you can find in every cheap motel.

Mark's style is the same. The entire room is split between clinical whites and blacks so deep they seem to absorb light. Behind the double doors, a hallway constricts my view into the room beyond, but I can see the tripods, the umbrellas, and the softboxes. Mark walks ahead, sitting in one of two chairs on either side of a polished black coffee table with an incredible view over the waterway. The world twists, and I have to lean against the wall to steady myself, swallowing the vomit as it tries to force its way out of my stomach.

 _You knew. You let him go, and you knew he wouldn't stop._

I look up, and my blood freezes. Mark Jefferson is looking at me. _No._ No, not at me, where he thinks I will be. He knew as soon as the future went dark I rewound, and it wouldn't take a detective to figure out I'd follow him back to his hotel room.

 _You knew,_ Chloe says in my head, _You promised to make them pay for what they did for Rachel, and instead, you let them go._

Each step into the room is as hard as climbing to the rooftop with Kate on the edge because I know what'll I'll find. I knew the consequences of letting Sean and his dog go. There's a fruit basket on the tv stand with two glasses and a bottle of champagne. On the other side of the room, a high school age girl bound and gagged on the couch. Dead. Mark Jefferson's eyes bore into me.

I close the distance between us in two steps and punch him as hard as I can in the face. His body animates as long as my fist is in contact with it, long enough to wipe that fucking grin off his face. He freezes in midair, eyes wide open in shock. What does he see now? Does he know how I'm going to make him suffer?

The cork exploding from the bottle behind me sounds like a gunshot in the absolute silence of the standstill, and I spin with one hand raised. Sean Prescott stands before me in a suit that undoubtedly cost more than my house, pouring the champagne with one hand and holding a gun against his thigh with the other. He moves through frozen time as easily as I do, the only remarkable thing about him. His suit is cut well, obviously expensive, but it wouldn't be out of place anywhere in the last fifty years, and his face is even more timeless.

"You going to shoot me _again_?"

"The gun is for you, yes, but not for your life. For your faith. Mark Jefferson is yours to do with as you will. You have my blessing," his voice has hints of an accent I've never heard anywhere in the world, an amalgamation of living through countless cultures.

"Why?"

"Because this timeline is coming to an end. All our attempts to prevent your fate will crumble," he sets the gun down beside the welcome basket, "She is coming, Maxine. The usurper, come to try and take my throne by force, and you will be called back to meet her."

"Have you been drinking your own Kool-Aid?"

"It was never my intention for you to be brought back, you know. It's how I've dealt with you spinners before, let you weave your own web to get caught in, but I see now trying to separate you was impossible. I'll admit I underestimated you, Maxine. I only hope these last few years of adolescence have been enough to prepare you for what you will have to do."

"Cut the riddles, Nostradamus."

Sean smiles, "You know, whenever you try to sound tough, you sound just like her."

"Don't."

"I wish you had found peace here without her. For your sake."

"Don't you _fucking_ dare talk about her. You—you monster."

"You've seen now how you have to be pragmatic if you hope to do the right thing in this world. You've seen the cost of the common good. Don't pretend you're above it all. Maxine Caulfield, you have done more with your childhood—"

"I am not a child."

"No matter how long you live, even if you live to see the end of time, as I will, you will still be blind to the millions of alternate realities that form the weave of history. And now a thread has come loose. A thread that, if pulled, will unravel all of creation.

I know you don't believe me yet, but you will. You will. All I ask is for you to remember this moment when you are called back to the true reality."

"I don't know where you get off," I say, "I really don't. And to be honest, I don't really give a fuck. We had an agreement. Break it if you want. I wasn't the one who begged for it."

Sean smiles, raising his glass, "To your good health, Maxine Caulfield."

He leaves as silently as he entered, padding out of the room like a graying wolf, but he leaves the gun on counter. It's a nice touch; I'll give him that. What he doesn't know, can't know, is that I haven't just fucked around reliving the same few years over and over. Chloe and I lived for five years, then seven, and a final nine before I realized there was no magic combination that could keep her from—keep her with me.

He may see every reality, but only I have seen the future in dozens of them, and none of Prescott's prophecies ever came true. I was a bit disappointed, really. Doomsday cults are stupid in every timeline. Nothing kills the theory of ultra-special spirt selection like these dumbasses. Either that or whoever is doling out these powers is a fucking moron. Which makes sense, actually.

 _With great power comes great bullshit._

I take the gun and turn back to Mark, still frozen mid-fall. With a snap of my fingers, time resumes, and he collapses to the floor. The familiar horror that always makes me smile blooms on his face.

"Let's play a game, Mark Jefferson. Tell me where I'm going to shoot you first."

* * *

I look around the hotel room one last time. Everything's wiped down. I'll take the gun with me and throw it away later. One of the nice things about being a time traveler is that I'm uncatchable. Sorry officer, I don't have an alibi for the time of the murder, but I was visiting a friend less than a second after it happened in a town four hours away.

There's still a piece of me that's disgusted, that knows everything Mark did doesn't justify me torturing him to death, and I can almost hear Chloe telling me what I used to tell her all the time, that the ends don't justify the means. But _fuck_ that. It was the universe that decided the ends justified the means when it gave me powers I never asked for and demanded her for payment. It was God who decreed none of us matter in His grand design, so fuck Him and His plan. Nothing that He or I build will ever be good enough to be worth Chloe's life.

One snap, and I'll be back at the photo exhibition. One snap, and I could be thousands of miles away in a whole different time period. Unlimited power at my fingertips, and for what? She's gone.

I sigh. I don't have to snap. I don't need to raise my arm either, but come on, it makes me feel like a fucking badass mage, and I've got to take whatever small joys are left in this life.

 _With a raise of her arm, the mighty mage Mirirassa, last Oracle of Chronos and only hope for the world, commands time itself. With a snap of her fingers, she tears a hole to another universe, one where Vohadon the Creeper never made it to her photo exhibition._

 _And then returns a split second later because she forgot to put the do not disturb sign on his door. The world is totally screwed._

* * *

"Do you have a second?" the reporter asks again.

"Don't you want to check out the photos first?"

"Oh."

"There'll be plenty of time for an interview, don't worry," keeping your memory alive, Chloe, one bad pun at a time, "Just please, for the love of Christ, don't ask me which is my favorite. It's the same every year."

"Right. Uh, sorry."

Chloe and I stood here. It was our second kiss, the first real one. The only one that stuck through all the different timelines. The fear and desperation and love all intermingled in the air around us like lightning, and ten years later, the air still has a charge that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. All the others—I mean, they happened, and I get that. But, they're not real. Not anymore. I close my eyes and rest my chin on my chest.

 _My powers might not last, Chloe._

 _That's ok. We will. Forever._

But we didn't. We didn't. The power is still here, but you aren't, Chloe.

"Max Caulfield," Joyce says.

Oh no. Not now.

"You need to visit more often, honey."

"Hi, Joyce."

I don't know what happened. One second I'm there, looking at her and the frown hidden behind her smile, and the next we're hugging each other and crying.

"I muh-miss her so much," I say, "And I w-was never there with her. I should-should have visited."

"You were there for her at the end, Max, and that's all that mattered."

"N-nuh-no it's n-n-not. I'm so, so sorry, Joyce. I'm so sorry."

"Look at us," Joyce pulls away and wipes a tear from her eye, "Cryin' and all. Chloe would want us to be happy. This is all so great, Max."

David steps in, resting a hand on Joyce's back. She's lucky to have him. First William, and then Chloe. David is the only thing keeping her together, and he really got his shit together for her when it counted.

"You gonna give us the tour?"

I look at the two of them, "I don't give a shit. I know you don't either. I can bring them by tomorrow if you really want to see, but let's go."

"You sure?" David asks.

Joyce looks down, dabbing her eyes again.

"Yeah."

* * *

Moonlight casts the world in silver. The art show, a distraction for Joyce and me, and then a visit to Chloe's grave is our yearly tradition. Complete silence hums in the darkness like ripples in a bottomless pool of black water. Grief is unending. No mother should have to bury her daughter. No girl should have to bury her best friend. Chloe's gravestone is a reminder of the most important lesson I had to learn. What should be is nothing more than naivety and willful ignorance. The world doesn't work around what should happen. What happens does, and that's the end of it. I should not torture someone to death, but he should never have drugged all those girls. I should not have cut a deal with Prescott, but if I hadn't, we would have torn each other and the world apart.

 _I'll always love you,_ her voice whispers in my subconscious.

My lips burn with a thousand kisses that will never be. My shoulders are heavy with a thousand hugs that will never happen. My heart bleeds from a thousand deaths that will never occur. Everything I did to try to secure a life for us, and she bled out on the fucking floor of a high school bathroom without knowing any of it, without knowing how much I loved her.

 _All those moments between us were real, and they'll always be real._

It is more than just a voice in my head. I can hear her. I can hear Chloe's voice like she is standing beside me, but she's not. And neither are Joyce and David. They are gone. Instead, William Price stands beside me in full technicolor against the monochromatic grey night. His blonde hair—the same color as Chloe's—drifts lazily in a nonexistent breeze.

"I wish I could have been there to walk her down the aisle."

"William?"

"I always told her. Joyce. I always told her you'd fall for each other. Prophecy, that was my gift. Always was," he looks at Chloe's headstone and shakes her head, "I would have liked to see her before she called you back, but there is only one reality for me."

"William, I-"

"No. I'm sorry," he looks to the sky "Beautiful, aren't they? The stars. No matter how long the storm rages, eventually the stars will shine. After everything you've seen, everything you've done, all you need to do is hold on a little longer. She needed you, and now you need her. And I want you to know that even though I can't be with you two, nothing has made me happier than seeing your love for each other grow. You are my daughter now too, Max, and I am so happy."

The air ripples. A splotch of bright blue, brighter even than William. The butterfly floats down to land on Chloe's gravestone.

"I am so happy," he says, " _So_ happy to see you together.'

The butterfly's wings beat lazily, each time buffeting me with wind.

"Tell her, won't you? Tell Chloe I love her."

The wind roars. Dirt swirls around me, digging into my skin and blasting my eyes. Thick trees scream as they splinter. I am falling. Or floating, swept away by the storm. Nothing makes sense anymore, and I can't see anything but darkness. William lied. There are no stars.

"I love both my daughters."

I reach out with both hands, trying to grab time anywhere I can, but it slips through my fingers. Something grabs my waist and holds on like the world will be torn apart if it lets go. Something soft presses against my lips. My heart tries to break its way out of its ribcage prison, and my brain burns against my skull, but for the first time in ten years, I am happy.

It only lasts a second. The grip on my waist loosens, and something pushes me backward. My skull cracks open, and darkness turns to light. I am nowhere, cast adrift in time without any of my power, and yet I feel as if a million flaming fishhooks are caught in my skin, reeling me in.

"Hang on, Max," William says, his voice faint, "Just hang on a little longer."

Freezing rain lashes against my skin like the tongues of a thousand whips. Wind slams into me, screeching in one unbroken cry of pain and anger and hate.

"I'll always love you. Now, get out of here, please! Do it before I freak."

I fall to my knees. Mud soaks through the knees of my jeans. My vision fades in and out, and there is no sound in the world. I try to breathe, but instead, I throw up a stream of blood. My arms shake at the strain of holding myself up, but someone pulls me away, turns me over, and instead of the bloody ground, I am looking up into Chloe. Her electric blue eyes. Her beautiful face. The smell of cigarettes on her ragged breath.

"Chloe."

She is saying something, but I can't hear her. I reach up, hesitating before cupping her cheek. She's real. She's really here. I sink into her lap, into my home, and I cry like I haven't cried in decades, maybe even centuries. I can't stop touching her face, her arms, her legs, making sure she's real, afraid she'll disappear.

"I missed you _so_ much."

"Max," she screams over the wind and rain, "Max! You have to go!"

"I already did."

"What?"

"I already did. Oh, Chloe, I love you so fucking much."

"But Arcadia Bay. My mom. The storm," Chloe looks up, and her eyes widen, "Max, what did you do? Look. Look!"

She props me up against her. The cyclone bearing down on the town is losing momentum over the ocean, dropping the boats and signs it had picked up on its rampage. Water falls back into the ocean layer by layer until only a fine mist more suspended than swirling conceals the eye of the storm, but it isn't enough to block out the girl in a bright red plaid shirt levitating with her mouth open in a silent scream. Chloe stands, leaving me sitting in the mud.

"No fucking way," she says, "Is that— _Rachel_?


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two: Strange Trails**

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Chloe yells as she sprints down the beach to where Rachel dropped from the sky into the ocean.

Choppy waves lap at my feet. There's no sign of her red shirt in the dark water, but I barely look before focusing on the seawall.

"Stay here. If I go under—Listen, what happened at the lighthouse—" Chloe peels off the soaked jacket that sticks to her like a second skin and kicks off her shoes, "I—"

"It's fine," I look away, "I get it."

"Max—"

"Go get Rachel. Go."

She hesitates for a moment but turns and wades into the bay. Rachel Amber. Rachel _fucking_ Amber. Her name is a curse on my lips. Of course it had to be her.

I kick at a clump of sand. I was stupid to think anything else, think that maybe—No. I won't think of it. I won't. I bite my tongue until my mouth fills with blood, but pain can't erase the image of Chloe in my arms, nothing but bloody soup in a shattered skull where her head used to be. Three times I drove her to the edge. I won't do it again.

 _And the other time,_ Chloe's voice is venomous in my head.

"Max," the real Chloe yells from the water, "Oh God, Max, I don't think she's breathing. I don't— _Fuck_!"

I spit blood onto the sand and close my eyes. My head throbs.

 _It was never really about me, was it?_ her voice spits fire _It was always about you and what you wanted._

"Max!"

Time freezes. I turn to the ocean and push my way through its frozen currents until I'm at her side. With Rachel's arm in one hand and Chloe's in the other, I pull them onto the shore. Chloe remains frozen with my name on her lips, her wide eyes staring at where I was. I kiss her one last time before taking a step back.

"Goodbye, Chloe."

Rachel is limp, but her eyes move beneath her lids, and her breath is warm against my hand, even in the standstill. I laugh before a sob chokes it. Just when you think the universe is done beating the shit out of you, it comes back with a crowbar. I turn my back on them both, and time resumes. Chloe stumbles, but her shock only lasts a second before she drops to Rachel's side.

"She's going to be fine," I can't keep the bitterness from accenting every syllable.

"We need to go. She needs to go to the hospital."

"She'll be _fine_."

"No, she's not. She's barely breathing," Chloe's eyes burn into my back, "What's your fucking problem, Max?"

I bite my tongue again. Chloe puts a hand on my shoulder for the second time in my today, but it's not the concerned hand from this morning when I rewound my way into her bed. She spins me around to face her, lips curling in a snarl, and shakes me, "What's wrong with you?"

Someone is beating a railroad spike into the back of my head. Spots of white light blossom in front of my eyes to each beat of my heart.

"Chloe. I've spent three centuries jumping through time, so maybe, just maybe, listen to me for once in your life, ok? Rachel is going to be fine. The last thing she needs is to go to a hospital. I can explain everything when we—"

"Arguing already?" Mark Jefferson says, "That doesn't bode well."

They stand on top of the seawall, all six of Prescott's dogs. Sean calls them The Seven Aspects of Divinity, including himself. It's all bullshit, of course, like everything else in this life.

"What do you want, Mark?"

"Mark?" Chloe asks, "Since when did you start calling this asshole Mark?"

"You know what we want," he says as though Chloe didn't say anything, "Rachel Amber belongs to Sean."

"Hey!" Chloe yells, "How about you go fuck yourself!"

"I'll give you all one chance," I say, "Walk away now."

"Or what? You'll rewind us away?" Jefferson laughs, "You can't run forever."

I raise a hand, and his cocksure smile vanishes. A second later, his skin sags before sloughing off his disintegrating muscles. When I lower my arm, nothing remains where Mark Jefferson stood except his sun-bleached bones.

"I don't know the rest of you," I say, "I never knew or cared what your names were, but I've killed every one of you too many times to count. This is your chance. You won't get another one. Rachel Amber is mine, and you can tell Sean if he wants her, he can come get her himself. Or I can just kill you now if you want to get it over with."

They scatter like I'm the storm that just vanished out of existence. Chloe is magnetic behind me. All I want to do is run to her and melt into her arms, but Prescott was right. I've lived too long to be selfish again. What I want doesn't matter. I close my eyes to keep the tears behind my eyelids.

 _You said I was your number one priority,_ Chloe's voice laughs in my head, so acidic it burns my ears.

"Sorry for being a bitch," I say, "We need to get moving, but I'll try to explain in the truck. You take one of Rachel's arms, and I'll take the other."

I look everywhere except Chloe as we struggle to drag Rachel to the truck. The sky is already bright blue without a cloud in sight, and people are starting to come out of wherever they bunkered down. We switch wordlessly at the steps, Chloe taking Rachel's arms while I switch to lift her feet. She keeps glancing at me as we carry her up the stairs that jut out of the seawall, but I stare at the hem of Rachel's shirt at the bottom right corner. Some threads have come loose, and I try to push everything else out of my head except for those fraying strings. The migraine helps. Pain devours everything in the end.

 _You're the God you keep cursing, forcing your fucking will on everyone else._

I drop Rachel's shoes as soon as we make it to the sidewalk and fall against the truck. My vision of the world comes in pictures separated by seconds of blinding light.

 _Fuck you, Max._

"You're going to have to drive," I say, "I think—I think I'm going to blackout. Just keep driving North. Don't stop for anything except gas."

I sneak a look at Chloe as I slide down the rusted metal. So many conflicting emotions play across her face. I've had three hundred years to watch them dance. Anger. Happiness. Confusion. Fear. And love, some of it for me even though I don't deserve it. Three hundred years, and I never get tired of watching her. But three hundred years is enough. It's time.

"I'll always love you," I echo back to her before the sound of a raging storm fills my ears and downs me.

* * *

 _You did this,_ Chloe hisses, each word a red-hot needle plunging into my skin, _You did this._

Warm blood runs down my arms, curling around my fingers before it drips into the void. Chloe's blood, my sacrifice a million times over, is so dark it's almost black. The air tastes of copper and salt. Something moves in the darkness. A bird's wings flutter. Red eyes watch me.

"Well?" I yell, "What do you want?"

 _You did this._

A path forms in front of me. Bubbles in time flash into existence on all sides. The Blackwell bathroom, the junkyard, and our backyard. Voices play over each other, but all I hear is the blast of the shotgun and the silence, the absolute silence that follows.

When I woke up, my arms instinctively reached out for her, but the bed was empty. And I knew. I knew the second before the gunshot went off, and I rolled over to see the note on my bedside table, the same note: _I love you, Max. I love you so God damn much, but I can't. I can't keep doing this. I'm sorry. Please don't blame yourself. Don't come downstairs. I don't want you to see._

I must have gotten out of the bed and walked downstairs, but I don't remember. I don't remember anything except collapsing at the sight of Chloe's body outside the kitchen's sliding door and crawling to her, cradling what was left in my arms. But I didn't cry, not that last time.

"You're alright," I said, rocking her like I did when she couldn't sleep, "I love you, Chloe. You're alright now. You're alright."

I don't know how long I held her. Night came. Her blood dried on my arms. I wished for death, but it never came, and when I stood Chloe peeled off me and fell to the ground, her headless body crumpled in a heap at my feet.

 _You did this._

* * *

Vibrations from the truck engine massage the cramp in my neck. My eyes flicker open, but I don't move even though I'm slumped awkwardly against the passenger door of Chloe's truck. Rachel is in the middle seat between us, her head on Chloe's shoulder and one of Chloe's hands on her leg. It's a miracle her other hand is keeping us from veering off the road and into a tree. Rachel laughs at something Chloe said—hollow and exhausted but genuine—and I close my eyes.

"How long was I out?" I ask without opening them.

"I don't know. About an hour," Chloe clears her throat, "Uh, Max, this is Rachel. Rachel, Max."

"We've met. Do you remember? The other timeline?"

"Timeline?"

I open my eyes to see if she's lying, but it doesn't do me any good, not with Rachel Amber.

"You've got the same powers as Sean Prescott, and part of his powers is that he's unaffected by my time manipulation. So, he's aware of all the other timelines I created trying to save you and Chloe, but he can't see the future. He only sees the timelines I've created that run parallel to what's happening right now. He's also had millennia to refine his powers, so I don't know which you'll get first. They get stronger with time too. Like, when I first got mine, I could barely rewind time more than a couple of minutes, but now I can hold a standstill for as long as I want or manipulate pockets of time. Prescott didn't know I could do that yet or he would have come himself instead of sending Jefferson."

" _Jefferson_ ," Rachel repeats, her eyes narrowing.

"Yeah. There was some kind of prophecy or some shit that someone with the same powers as Prescott would come to Arcadia Bay. That's why he teamed up with Jefferson. He needed to track you down and—well I don't really know how it all works, to be honest, but apparently, there has to be some sort of triggering event for someone to manifest their powers, usually some kind of extreme stress."

Rachel looks down, her chest heaving. Chloe's hand tightens on her leg, and my throat constricts until I can't breathe.

"It's ok. You're ok now. Max killed him, right Max?"

"I don't expect it'll last long. Like Rachel proved, it's really fucking hard to kill people like us. Jefferson is one of the easiest, but Prescott won't let him stay dead for long."

"What do you mean, 'won't let him?'"

"Like I said, Rachel and Prescott have the same powers, which as best as I can tell is some kind of control over matter. Like I can bend time, you two are able to bend matter to your will. It's not all bad though. Killing Jefferson resets his powers, so he'll only be able to catch glimpses of the future now, which will make us harder to track."

"It's not all bad," Chloe says, letting each word roll off her tongue, "Sounds pretty fucking bad. How are we supposed to outrun someone who's omnipresent? You couldn't even outrun him jumping through time."

"He's not omnipresent. He doesn't see everything, just one moment in time like normal but expanded to every timeline in existence. Plus, his—and Rachel's—powers take a lot longer to channel than mine. It's why it took you so long to come back."

"So, our plan is what?" Chloe asks, "Just run?"

"For now," I pause but force myself to continue, "But this is just your prologue. After this, you two can fly away to whatever corner of the world you want. I promise."

Chloe blushes, "You saw that?"

"I wasn't a shitty friend in every timeline, Chloe Price," I lie.

* * *

I lay awake in the back of Chloe's truck, wrapped in the sleeping bag Chloe gave me in exchange for insisting her and Rachel share the cabin seats without me. They'll be plenty warm from sharing body heat. Chloe's not-quite-snores—the ones I used to tease her about—vibrate through the metal. Just to be safe, I wait until the moon is halfway across the sky before freezing time. It's weird how I need to be careful now that Rachel is around.

I slip out of my sleeping bag as quietly as I can and jump off the back of the truck. We pulled over on a side road about an hour away from Seattle and parked behind a massive pile of asphalt. Stars shine through a thin layer of clouds. A breeze from the north rustles my hair as I walk to the edge of the little offshoot. The rings around my neck are heavier, trying to remind me of their weight before they disappear forever.

No matter where I went in time, I always kept these rings around my neck. Whether I was jumping through century-old photos or hopping into a younger Max, they were always there, the only things I was able to carry with me through time. Even Chloe couldn't come with me, but these small reminders of our love, of our commitment, they stuck. Because I made a promise.

Yes. I made a promise. A promise I will keep this time. I undo the chain and hold our wedding rings in my hand. Chloe was the only one I've ever loved. It's not dramatic to say after three hundred years; it's just a fact. But maybe that was the problem. Maybe I was never exciting enough for Chloe, whatever she said up on that stage.

"Excitement is a mere counterfeit of bliss," I say, weighing the rings in my palm.

"These storms and these adventures," Rachel's voice reverberates through the standstill, "I prefer to know that thou still cared for my plainest self."

Her smile is perfect, her face unreadable.

"Sorry," I say, "Couldn't sleep."

"Neither could I."

The silence stretches, but unlike me, Rachel seems completely at ease. Cool emanates from her effortlessly. Even after being dead and buried for weeks, she's completely radiant. But there's something different in her eyes, the hollowness that binds the two of us together. Few people have felt death and seen the void waiting on the other side. In some ways, the experience that binds Rachel and me together is stronger even than the love between Chloe and me together. After all, even love can't stand against death.

Finally, she says, "It feels weird finally talking to you. I feel like I already know you. Chloe never stopped talking about you. Kind of annoying really."

"What do you want?"

"You know she's happy you're here."

I snort, "The only thing I _know_ is that you're full of shit."

"They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. You deflect just like she does. But it isn't real, is it? The Max Chloe told me about was never this grouchy."

"Yeah, well, I'm not the Max she told you about. She always thought I was the better one."

"Same," Rachel exhales through gritted teeth, "She doesn't know, does she? But you do."

"About what?"

"Frank. Mark."

"No. I—I didn't have the heart to tell her."

"Thank you."

"I didn't do it for you."

"I know. It's fucking funny, honestly. Everyone always thought I had everyone wrapped around my finger. Bet you did too, didn't you? But nothing that anyone did was ever for me. No one cared about me. 'I prefer to know that thou still cared for my plainest self,'" she laughs, high and cold and bitter, "I've lied so much, I don't even believe myself anymore."

"I did try to save you. Twice."

"But not for me, right? It was always for Chloe."

"No. Not for Chloe. I don't think I did any of it for Chloe really. I did it because I _loved_ her, but what did that mean? Just that I was unwilling to give her up. I put her through hell just to try and keep her with me. I stole," my voice breaks, but the words tumble out anyways, "I stole the only timeline where she was happy because I couldn't live without her. Because I don't really love her. I never wanted her happiness if it wasn't shared with me.

"Twice. Twice I went back in time and managed to skip a grade to get into Blackwell a year faster. Twice I seduced Mark Jefferson before you did and got him caught in the act, so Prescott's empire crumbled and neither you or Chloe or anyone else ever had to be touched by all that shit ever again. Twice Chloe chose you over me. After all, I could never compete with Rachel _fucking_ Amber. And twice I destroyed the timeline. It was never about trying to do what was right. It was about trying to twist time and fate into something it wasn't so that I could end up with Chloe because I'm a selfish bitch. But, I'm changing that this time. I won't get between Chloe and happiness again. I meant what I said in the truck."

Rachel is silent for a long time, looking out into the darkness between the trees. The wedding bands in my fist are warm for the first time in decades. All the aches and pains of three centuries cramp my muscles and pull on my shoulders, pulling me down into the earth until it swallows me in a shallow grave. Chloe should be the one with the powers, not me.

"What I want," Rachel says, "I want to kill Mark and Mr. Prescott and the rest of their cult. I want to kill them in every single timeline there is until none of them can ever come back, and then I want to go someplace no one knows my name, someplace I can be whoever I want."

I meet her eyes, and for the first time, I can see what's behind them. The same inferno that eats me alive is starting in her.

"No. You don't. You can't."

"What?"

"You don't want to kill them. And you can't have a fresh start. Believe me. For twenty years, I hunted them down in every timeline I could. For three years, I killed Sean Prescott, he resurrected, and I killed him again, and for every time I killed him, I killed Jefferson a hundred more. I've tortured him to death in every way you could imagine. But it's done nothing but make me hate myself.

"You can't have a fresh start because no matter where you go, you'll always know yourself. You'll always have to face who you are and what you've done every time you look in the mirror. There is no escape from who you are or what you've done.

"The only thing you can do is kill yourself and try to be better. Each day, kill who you used to be, and become someone better. Do that at the start, and maybe you'll find the peace I will never know."

"They killed me, Max."

"Have you ever heard 'Lady Lazarus?'"

"The Sylvia Plath poem?"

"Yeah. She never finds peace either, you know. 'Herr God. Herr Lucifer. Beware. Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair, and I eat men like air.' The fire that she stokes, the desperate desire for vengeance, they are what keeps her from ever finding peace. She's never able to let go, so she's bound in a cycle of death that she will never be able to break free of."

Rachel watches me with those eyes that miss nothing and her head cocked to one side.

"Believe me," I say, "You don't want to be caught in that cycle."

"Don't throw it away," she says.

"What?"

"Whatever you've got in your hand. Don't throw it away just yet," she smiles slightly, "Goodnight, Max."

"Goodnight."

She walks back to the truck, gravel crunching under her feet. I wait a few minutes after the truck door slams to make sure she won't wake up Chloe before I release time. Somewhere out in the darkness, an owl hoots. The air is sweet with the sticky smell of pine sap and cedar berries in the air. This isn't so bad, being here with Chloe and Rachel. So what if she chooses Rachel in the end, at least she's alive. At least she's happy. I fasten the chain around my neck and slip the rings under my clothes.

The car door clicks open and shut as quietly as a rusty old truck can, which is to say scatters every bird in a ten-mile radius. Chloe's boots scruff against the gravel, and the smell of her perfume nearly washed away by perfume and sweat fills the air. She stops beside me, and without thinking, my hand reaches around her waist, and she drapes her over my shoulders on instinct, pulling me close, just like that day on the train tracks.

We don't say anything, and we don't have to. I lean into her and let myself believe that we really will last forever. I allow myself feel the peace I can never have again.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Author's Note:**_ Hey, everybody! So, there is a long delay between chapters two and three. I don't know if anyone noticed or not. I had a lot of stuff come up in my personal life I had to address, but now I'm finally ready to get back into it. Life is Strange is probably my favorite game because of its characters and how much I related to them through similar experiences (not magical time travel, unfortunately ;). This is one of the many ideas for a follow up that I've had since playing the game. It's my first time trying to write really anything for anyone else to read, and I'm still trying to figure out how the system here works. I hope people like it. If you do, maybe I'll post another one when I'm done with this story. New chapter every Sunday! Pinky promise! -D.D.

 **Chapter Three: To the Ends of the Earth Would You Follow Me?**

"So, what's the plan, Super Max?"

I chew my third of the stale granola bar Chloe found under her seat, watching cars zoom through the thin glimpses of highway between the trees. Rachel's hand resting on Chloe's shoulder makes it hard to think.

"Keep driving north until we hit Seattle."

There's a pause before Chloe asks, "What then?"

"We'll stock up, change cars, maybe get an RV, then head east. Once we have some distance, Rachel can start flexing her powers, but not until then. Any time we use our powers, it makes us easier to find. One of Prescott's goons is some kind of tracker."

Another beat of silence, "And then?"

I shrug, "Part of this fucking prophecy is that Rachel'll be able to kill him. No idea how. I never could keep him down."

"Ok. It's kill or be killed by an invincible god. No problem. Actually, just one problem. Unless you've got a stash in your hipster bag, none of us have any money. Otherwise we would have gotten the hell out of here, like, months ago and none of this would have happened."

 _ **We,**_ I close my eyes, "If we get to Seattle, we won't have to worry about money."

"Thanks to Jefferson burying me with all my shit, I've still got the credit card my dad gave me. After everything he's done, I don't think he'll complain about paying for a weekend girl's trip to Seattle."

"You've been missing for six months," I ask, "Don't you think your dad will be worried?"

"Six months?" Rachel's eyes widen.

Chloe hugs her tight, but over her shoulder, her eyes are fixed on me, her pupils dilating until they threaten to swallow her irises.

"Chloe—" I lunge forward to late, I know as my hand closes around the back of her shirt.

Rachel explodes into flames, the fire sticking to everything it touches, including Chloe, but it doesn't have time to burn her. Time freezes as I throw her backward into a rewind bubble that washes the fire from her skin. In the standstill, Rachel levitates above the struck, and she and the fire are only stopped for a moment before reanimating. A surge of wind knocks me onto my back, swirling around Rachel and igniting like gasoline, engulfing her in a column of fire. Tears vaporize the moment they leave her eyes.

"Max. I don't want this."

The inferno roars, almost drowning out her words, and as I'm getting back to my feet, Chloe's truck explodes, shards of metal freezing midair before impaling me.

"I don't want any of this."

"Neither do I. But we don't have a choice. We can't go back. Not even me," I answer her unspoken question, "Somethings cannot change, constants like gravity that none of us can touch."

The fire fades into Rachel's skin until it is just her kneeling on the ground. I get to my feet and hold out a hand.

"We are constants of the universe now," I say, "Forces that can't be stopped. Sounds badass until you find out what it costs."

She takes my hand, and I hold hers. It is warm, without callus.

"All we can do is try to protect the people we love. Try to give them the best life we can."

Rachel lets go of my hand, walks to Chloe.

"We should get moving," she says.

I let go of time except for the shards of metal hovering in the air. Chloe needs to see. She needs to understand, just like Rachel.

"Fuck. Wha— Max? What'd you do?

"She saved your life. Again," Rachel pulls Chloe to her feet and cups a cheek, "It's my fault. I lost control."

There's a truck frozen halfway through blowing up, but Chloe only has eyes for Rachel. In every reality, she can only take so much of my time meddling before she loses it. Living in a world where you have to second guess everything that happens, when you have to question how many times you tried to end it, when you have to question if your lover is actually your jailor, it takes its toll. But there's none of that with Rachel. They kiss. Make up. And its over. No tears. No screaming matches. No begging to just let her die already. My head pounds. There's a vision coming, I can feel it.

" _I can't take it anymore, Max. Every year people are dying because I'm alive."_

" _It's just an earthquake, Chloe. They happen all the time."_

" _Every year? Fucking disasters every single year on the same day?"_

" _Listen—"_

 _A high, frantic laugh, "How many times have we had this conversation, Max?"_

" _Chloe—"_

" _I'm done listening to your perfect fucking words. Don't bullshit me. How many times? How many times?"_

"Max?" It's Rachel, not Chloe, who is looking at me with concern in her eyes. She's the only person I've met who can lie with her eyes.

"We should get moving," I wave my hand, and the truck reassembles, good as—well, not new. I think that truck was always a rusted piece of junk.

"Holy amazeballs," Chloe says, "Alright, Batmax, let's get out of here."

" _Nine."_

" _Nine times?" another laugh, "Nine times. Is this what you do? You go back and change things until I'm ok with millions of people dying?"_

I slam my door shut, Chloe and I sandwiching Rachel between us. Her eyes are on me, burning like fire, but I don't look.

"We still don't have any gas money," Chloe says.

"Any cover we had is blown now. Just wake me up when we are getting close to running out of gas, and I'll rewind it back."

"You think Prescott knows we're here?" Rachel asks.

"If he didn't already, yeah," I say. A headache is building behind my eyes, "But it was only a matter of time anyways. Don't feel bad."

"I don't. I just hope he brings Jefferson with him."

I rest my head against the window as Chloe starts the car, imagining I'm laying my head on her chest instead, imagining the vibrations from the engine are vibrations from her snores.

"I killed Jefferson. I killed him in thousands of timelines. I killed him again and again and again. But there's no peace there. Trust me."

No one has an answer for that. I sneak a glance at Chloe. It's not like her to have nothing to say. The rising sun illuminates her blue hair, just like it did the day she almost ran me over, the day my life changed forever. She looks out into the distance with hooded eyes, and for once, I don't know what she's thinking. Both her hands are on the steering wheel. Both of Rachel's are on her own legs. The bitter part of me allows a short-lived sunburst of happiness before I close my eyes and succumb to the vision.

* * *

" _Come on, Max! Hurry!"_

A train's horn. The screech of a train's breaks. My eyes flutter open. The junkyard's rusted cars are scattered all over the forest like a child's toys. There is a scar across the earth that leads to what's left of Arcadia Bay. At my back, a massive line of fire traces the horizon. And on the train tracks, William, a broken train lying before him on its side, a raven cawing on his shoulder.

"I know it's hard," he says without looking at me, "It's hard to keep on when you think everything is destroyed. When your love is dead and buried."

He turns to me with his arms wide, and without thinking I run to him, wrap my arms around him. A second raven lands on the train engine, pecking at it. I try to cling to him, but he pulls me back, his blue eyes smiling.

"This isn't the beginning of the end, Max. What has ended is already gone. Let it go."

"I can't. I can't let go."

"You can. You would follow Chloe to the ends of the earth, wouldn't you?"

I nod.

"So let go, Max. Let go."

The raven on the train hops off, flutters up my shoulder, and whispers in my ear, "You have nine times to die."

The other raven cocks its head, "This is Number Three."

The earth shakes. In the distance, the sea rises into a wall of black water that touches the sky. William squeezes my shoulder and is gone. As the tsunami sweeps closer, the firelight makes the water look like blood.

" _You saved me again. Now we're totally bonded for life."_

The wave crashes over me, filling my nose, my mouth. It's her blood. Warm. Sticky. I open my eyes. My lungs scream for air, but they fill with blood. An army of silhouettes stands motionless around me.

"It's sad, isn't it?"Sean Prescott asks me, "No torture we can think of could be as bad as what you've done to yourself."

The darkness falls away like scales from my eyes, displaying a white room and Prescott standing over me on one side with Jefferson on the other. I reach for my power, but it shrivels in my hands. My head is too heavy. It rolls backwards, slamming down onto the gurney I'm strapped to.

"Is she seeing this?"

I follow Prescott's eyes to a woman I don't recognize leaning against the wall, looking purposefully at her shoes. She nods.

"Then let's get started. Mark, if you would."

A sharp sting on my neck. I am falling, falling backwards through the gurney, backwards into a hole in the earth, and all the while they are there, Prescott and this woman I've never seen, his charcoal suit a rainbow to her faded colors. A long, black shawl falls around her, ending in beaded strips around her calves. Her sleeves are pulled back to show scars crisscrossing over her dark skin. They seem to glow the longer I look at her. I don't move. Can't move. I stare at her, trying to catch her eyes, but she never looks up, not even when Jefferson takes the hammer to my knees.

I don't know how long it goes on. Hours. Days. Years. Am I seeing the future or the past? Or is this woman a new member of Prescott's cult? It doesn't matter. None of it matters because Sean is right. This is child's play.

"Stop," he says at last, "Give me the knife."

Prescott leans over my broken body, searching my eyes with his, the touch of the cold knife feather light on my neck. For the first time, I notice he is not wearing a tie, that his collar is undone and lose, showing a scar that curves around his neck.

"There's an old legend preserved by the Nordic people, detailing how the man they called Odin came to rule. He was not born into his role like other gods. It was not his birthright. He had to seek it out, had to pay the price for power. Ultimately, he hung himself from the world tree with a spear thrust into his side, and he waited for nine days and nine nights until power came to him, offering himself as a sacrifice to himself.

"He was the most powerful of the Gods, yet even he could not prevent Ragnarök. All that power, and still he had his end, as we all do one day.

"I am sorry, Max. Caulfield, sorry it has to be this way."

And with that, he draws the knife across my throat.

* * *

"Max?" Rachel's voice, her hands on my shoulders.

The driver's side door is open. Chloe is sitting on the hood of the car with a cigarette in hand. Cars zoom by on the highway. I take a deep breath, savoring that it makes it to my lungs, and massage my throat.

"Chloe insisted on driving until we ran out of gas, so you could sleep."

"How far out of Seattle are we?"

"Maybe thirty or forty-five minutes?" Rachel shrugs, but her eyes narrow, "You ok, Max?"

"I'm fine. Bad dream," I move to scratch under my t-shirt collar, but Rachel swats my hand away.

"Holy shit."

"What's wrong, ladies? Getting a little sore in first class?" Chloe jumps off the hood, but her smile disappears when she sees me.

"What? What's wrong?" I ask.

Rachel pulls a compact mirror out of the pocket and shows me my neck. There is a long, angry-red scar over the skin just below my t-shirt.

"Some fucking dream," Chloe says.

Chloe squeezes into the truck, reaching over Rachel to trace the mark with a hand.

"Does it hurt?"

"A little," I say, leaving out that I'd go through anything to feel Chloe's fingertips on my skin, that wherever she touches, the burning vanishes.

"What happened in your dream? Start from the beginning."

I shake my head, "It's fine. It was nothing."

"Tell me the truth, Max."

I try to stop myself from looking at her, but I can't, and the moment my eyes meet hers, the words fall out of my mouth, "I saw your dad. I saw William in a timeline where the storm destroyed Arcadia Bay, and he had these two ravens with him. They—They told me I would have to die nine times. And then," each word falls heavier than the last, but I feel nothing, a skill from decades of pain and war and death, "And then Prescott was there with Jefferson and a woman I didn't recognize. They tortured me. Slit my throat."

"Jesus," Chloe pulls me to her for the first time since Rachel appeared.

Her heart beats in time with mine. All these memories that she will never know, they rise up inside me. She will never propose. We will never hike through the redwoods. She won't ever get her GED to go to college in Seattle. The apartment we shared—the very first home we made together—is there. It's two blocks away from where we have to go. Chloe's grip tightens around me. I give her one last squeeze before I let go. I have to let go.

"We need to keep moving," I hold out a hand and rewind gas back into the truck's tank, "There's a self-storage place on East 21st and John Street. Everything we need is in there. Money. Fake IDs. Guns."

"After all that time you bitched at me?" Chloe asks.

"You were right," I smile, "I never knew where I would end up in the timeline when I went to war with Prescott, so I went as far back as I could and made some investments. Long story short, as soon as we make it there, we're good."

"Alright, Bat-Max. Not bad."

"Uh, guys?" Rachel knocks against the back window, "Police."

A cruiser pulls over to the side of the highway without its sirens. I can count the constellation of sweat on his forehead from here. There are two men in the backseat, their faces hidden.

"Rachel, you remember that address I said?" she nods, "I want you to keep driving until you find it, no matter what."

"No, Max you—" Chloe says.

"Rachel?"

She nods again.

"I'll meet you guys there."

I slide out of the passenger seat and slam the door behind me. Rachel holds Chloe back.

"Take care of her," I mutter under my breath.

The rear window of the police car rolls down as I walk towards it, and Sean Prescott smiles up at me. Mark Jefferson sits beside him with an angry welt across his face, the price for getting outsmarted by a little girl.

"Newborns are always so hard to control, aren't they?"

"You can't have her."

"I don't want her. I want you," he smiles when I don't say anything, "What have you got to lose? I think we've both proven incapable of killing each other, and you can always wind it all away if you need to."

"You've got your walking pharmacy with you. How do I know you won't drug me up?"

"Go on. Do your worst. Just leave the bones in the car, please. I would like to have him back when we're through."

Rachel and Chloe are looking back through the rear window of the truck. I wave them on, and Rachel starts the engine. Only when they're gone do I turn back to Mark Jefferson and raise my arm. Once he's nothing but bare bones, Sean scoots over and pats the open seat beside him.

* * *

There is no fruit basket waiting for us in Prescott's hotel penthouse this time. The other five of his special henchmen, the aspects of divinity, are piled on the bed with their throats slit. Sean waves to them with an absent-minded hand, "I wanted to make you feel as comfortable as you could. No tricks. No games."

He leads the way through a room with a bar and gallery of photographs, including some of my own, down a narrow hall tracing the outside of more rooms, and out onto a balcony that looks out over the waterway. Someone prepared a table for us. There is a basket of rolls, a saucer of oil, and a cheese platter. Two glasses of steaming tea sit before each chair.

"Please," Sean gestures to the seat with the view out over the ocean, "Have a seat."

I take the chair that looks back into the penthouse and cross my legs. Sean laughs and sits down, taking a piece of bread and tearing off a piece.

"You know, the problem with people like Mark and the others is that they'll never be able to reach their full potential. A blessing and a curse, I suppose, given the alternative. Our alternative. Rachel Amber's alternative."

He pauses to devour the bread, smiling with tight lips as he does.

"You are not the only one who knows what its like to be forced into a reality without the one you love. You are not the only one who knows what its like to beg for death but unable to receive it. I know. And I understand," he looks at me across the table, jaw set, "Even though what I do might seem incomprehensible, reprehensible to you, you do not know how many millennia I tried to shirk this role that was destined for me. And I want you to meet another."

"Another?"

"Someone almost as old as I am," he takes the tea and rests it in his lap, looking down into it, "I thought I was alone for so long. The world was smaller then."

There is a beat of silence as he looks out over the world with hooded eyes, his pupils a well of darkness, the same void at the heart of mine. Finally, he looks back at me, and when he does, his eyes are damp.

"I want you to know that you and Chloe were never a part of our plan. I thought I would have to wait a thousand years to find another spinner. We've tried every way possible to leave you and her out of it, let you remain dormant, let you have a happy life with together, but as you found out with us, fate has other plans. And now we will have to make do. All of us.

"The tea in front of you is a drug, a psychedelic of sorts to those without gifts, but to us, it gives us the ability to transcend this world, to visit a higher plane, or what's left of it anyways."

I snort, "Is this how you sold your bullshit to your _Aspects of Divinity_?"

Prescott actually laughs along with me, "My powers are not limited to catching on fire and resurrecting the dead. Most minds, even those of the gifted, are easily altered through manipulation of simple chemistry. There were timelines I tried it on you and Chloe. Once, I wiped your memory of your powers from you after you saved Chloe. Another time, I bent your father's mind so that you never left for Seattle, so Joyce Price decided she'd rather walk home instead of calling her husband for a ride, so that Rachel Amber never moved to Arcadia Bay. But you always knew, deep down. That part of subconsciousness, your soul, whatever you want to call it, knew that the relationship between you and Chloe was an imitation, and even when I was able to stop you from ever experiencing Chloe's death to keep you dormant, that soul could not be hoodwinked or sold a lie. It was one of many times we tried to save the two of you."

"So," I stare at the tea, trying to find the words, "So—"

"The tea will stop you from consciously using your powers. Much like the times we have tried to kill one another, or the times we have sought peace in oblivion, you will subconsciously rewind out of fatal danger, if it arises. And after the effects pass, you will be able to rewind back through and take back these decisions should you choose to. Your gifts will return when the effects fade."

The tea is light, almost clear as water, and when I pick it up the warmth of the cup makes me shiver. Even if Sean's lying and this tea will let him kill me, would that really be so bad? To be done. To rest at last.

"Fuck it."

Prescott raises his cup, "To your health, Maxine Caulfield."

Together we raise the cups to our lips. The tea is viscous, more like syrup that tea, and bits of bark or root or whatever-the-fuck stick and burn at the back of my throat. He keeps his eyes on me, and I keep my eyes on him, just like we did at the bar in Arcadia Bay when we divided the world between us. When I abandoned Chloe.

 _Chloe._

A moment's panic, but no, my powers are humming at the tips of my itchy trigger fingers. I am not ready to die yet. Not yet. Selfish or not, I have to tell Chloe. I have to tell her how much I love her. I will not die before saying goodbye.

I drain the cup and set it back on its saucer. Prescott follows a second later, grinning at me, but his teeth are too big for his head. Two half-dead coals smolder where his eyes should be. I reach for my powers, but they are gone. Sean's smile widens, and for the first time, I notice his teeth are filed into points.

"Prescott—"

But the sky falls before I can finish. It pours down, drowning the world until all that's left is a pinprick of light where the sun was, growing fainter and fainter until it blinks out of existence.

* * *

 _Maxine Caulfield,_ the voice is a whisper from the wind, a rumble from the earth, _Welcome home._

"Who are you?"

 _Open your eyes, child._

The world exists only in shades of black. There is no light, but the shapes in the darkness immediately remind me of the Seattle tree farm I would go to with my dad to pick out a Christmas tree in early spring when the new saplings first start to stretch towards the sky. Then I see their faces.

"Where am I?"

"The Void," Prescott answers from behind me, and the darkness trembles or ripples, "The higher dimension destroyed to make our own."

 _What our world will become if we do not save it,_ the voice pauses, and a new shape emerges from the darkness. A beautiful woman. Or what seems like a woman at first glance. _You have the same projection as Rachel Amber._

The whatever-it-is smiles.

"I smell fear," a massive greying wolf with Prescott's voice appears on the peripheries of my vision before vanishing again, "We are not here to kill you, young one."

 _You have been through so much. Please forgive us for this last test._

"Test?" My head is light and heavy at the same time, spinning. "What are you talking about?"

The woman steps forward and pets my neck, now elongated and covered in fur.

 _I wish I could create a different fate for you._

The darkness wavers, evaporating like mist before the dawn, and in its place is nothing but a blank white nothingness.

 _I am sorry, Maxine Caulfield._

Thunder? Or is it gunshots? My stomach drops into freefall as the world starts to reappear like a fresh polaroid being shaken.

Six shapes all in black.

A bright splash of blue.

Red flannel.

"Chloe?"

"Max!"

But it is not Chloe who answers, and as I watch, the scene starts to move in reverse. A group of gunman retreat, bullets zipping back to their magazines, and Chloe, Chloe rises from the ground, floating lifeless and full of bullet holes. One by one the holes vanish, slowly at first, but faster and faster. I try to reach out, to grab onto time, but it slips through my fingers. David's gun springs to Chloe's hand.

"Max!"

It's Rachel, but I don't even look at her. As time slows to a stop, I step forward, taking the gun from Chloe's hand and pushing her down.

 **Crack!**

 **Crack!**

The bullets hang in midair as soon as they leave the gun, but an instant later they speed into two of the attacker's foreheads. Time is gone. It bucks away from me. Pain blossoms from my shoulder where Chloe's heart was a second earlier.

I don't hear the three explosions, but I see the bodies fall before a second bullet shatters my third rib, glancing away from Chloe's face by millimeters. My gun hand drops. I can't stop it, and the final shooter lowers his gun to where Chloe is exposed between my legs.

 **"NO!"** Rachel and I shout at the same time, but before I can raise the pistol, a blast of air roars through us, pushing Chloe and me to the ground, and by the time I roll on top of her to shield her with my body, the gunman is just a black speck in the blue sky.

Rachel stands with one hand extended, her mouth still open in a silent shriek and her whipping around her face in an invisible gale.

I roll off Chloe. Warm blood pools under my back.

"Max," this time it is Chloe beside me, cradling me, "Oh my God—"

I laugh, reaching for her face, but my hand only goes halfway before she has to take it and hold it to her cheek.

"Just a flesh wound," I say, looking past Chloe for the first time to see we are in the labyrinth of giant storage garages, "Oh. Cool. We made it."

"Max. Just be quiet," Chloe holds a hand to my side, trying to hold the life in me, "Jesus. Jesus _fucking_ Christ. You're going to be ok. You're going to be ok."

"I'm going to be ok," I smile, let myself stroke her cheek at my visions shrinks, "The passcode is 07042021. Our anniversary. It's all packed. Ready to go. Just drive East. And Chloe?"

She watches me. Tears in her eyes. I hang onto them. I want them to be the last thing I see before the darkness takes me.

"I love you. So much."


End file.
